This time of year my daycare friends always love playing this game. Luckily I do not have to remember the words or melody. I just watch the YouTube video that morning and I am set! (How ever did we manage before YouTube?)

Surfing the web with your kids on a rainy day and looking for something new and different to impress them with? How about the vegetable orchestra? They have their own website, but this video on youtube sums it up nicely and caught my son’s attention with its tools, kitchen gadgets, music, and added playing with food value.

P.S. Unfortunately it is NOT located in Vienna, VA… it is based in that other Vienna across the Atlantic.

I learned young that houses with small children are where good furniture comes to die. I inherited my first kitchen table from an aunt whose three children had spent the last 15 years breaking it in. No amount of cleaning could remove all the hidden patches of stickiness.

When I eventually replaced that table I was saddened when the first kitchen table I purchased started to go the same way. Homemade play dough, finger painting, and a toddler whose first instinct was to gnaw on the table rather than her food took their toll. Then I opened a home daycare and we gathered round the table to learn about ice with food coloring and salt, made candles, and melted crayons. Little bits of our days ground themselves permanently into our table, which I realized was likely to last just a few years rather than carry us through the next decade so I looked for a solution. It was there that I discovered the best application of vinyl  ever: Fitted vinyl tablecloths.

We love the round ones available at Happy Accents, and have also found a woman who makes custom fitted cloths for unusually sized and shaped tables.

My vinyl tablecloth habit (my seventh is on its way here as I type)  is probably worse for the environment than my drive through cheeseburger habit, but I will spare you the analysis this time…

Happy belated Thanksgiving!

We snagged a great book from the library recently! In A Plump and Perky Turkey (written by Teresa Bateman and illustrated by Jeff Shelley) the turkeys all skip town before Thanksgiving and the town-folks try to trick them back, but (after pages of engaging illustrations and rhymes that please me) they end up eating shredded wheat on Thanksgiving. Luckily for us meat eaters, our Loudoun turkeys weren’t quite as savvy as those in the book. I know Thanksgiving has passed, but if you feel like embracing your inner locavore the rest of this holiday season, the folks at Buy Fresh Buy Local Virginia have put together a list of local turkey providers by county.

Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary

Our family kicked off Thanksgiving week with a trip across White’s Ferry to visit the Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary in Poolesville, MD, where we spent an afternoon celebrating an early Thanksgiving with the Turkeys and participating in a vegan potluck with hundreds of people. The animals at the sanctuary were spread out with plenty of room and the atmosphere was peaceful and inviting despite the freezing temps and the surprisingly large crowd. The sanctuary does not have any upcoming events or visiting hours listed on their website now, but I definitely recommend visiting it.

Turkeys feasting at Poplar Spring Sanctuary

More on White’s Ferry

If you are looking for a change of scenery on a day home with sick kids, a drive through the county and ride across the river on the only ferry still operating on the Potomac River might fit the bill. You can keep your kids and their germs in the car the whole time, but share a special adventure and most importantly get out of the house! A round trip ticket costs $6 ($4 one-way) and the ferry runs from 5am to 11pm year-round.

View from the car on White’s Ferry

There are many reasons to do it, but I’ll let Susan of Toddler Planet tell you why.

First, a note to friends and family: read nothing into this. Our life is full with two at the moment. We are still catching up on years of sleep deprivation. We are not pregnant!

Now that that’s over with… I have met a lot of beautiful three kid families lately. Awesome kids, stellar moms, great dynamics, etc. I just cannot imagine any of these families without the third kid in the same way that I cannot imagine my kids without each other or my life without either of them.  Every time I see a mom of three or more I am struck by how comfortable they are with the littlest. A part of me would love to take all I have learned since my blind jump into parenting and do it again with the confidence, experience, and maturity I have gained. The rest of me knows that every time I get a little cocky the next parenting challenge comes up to bite me in the behind and leave me humble for a while.

I have also watched the generation before me scramble to care for their aging parents over the past few years, and am starting to think that my Peter and I may be too much of a handful for our two kids when we hit old age. This is a dangerous argument though… as the conclusion is that  we need a dozen or so kids.

Anyway, during one of those moments I stumbled upon Havingthreekids.com (with a tagline of “A site for those who have three, want three, or fear three”) and actually laughed out loud while reading the first column posted by Jennifer Eyre White. In addition to the columns, her site offers a community forum and links to blogs and other resources.

GreenerLoudoun is a blog for all you local folks interested in greening your lives. It covers a wide range of topics — from information on reuse and recycling, to how our choices affect local wildlife, to educational events suitable for children. The blog is interspersed with fascinating photographs, as well.  Have a look!

I was just going to write a post on Douglass Park, but in googling for a link to its website I came across another site of interest. I Saw Your Nanny is a site where you can anonymously post accounts about nannies providing care you find to be questionable. As both a parent (who has used several different types of childcare for my own children) and a childcare provider, I am not sure how I feel about this site. On the one hand it leaves an impression of some kind of spy or anonymous big brother looking over your shoulder, but on the other hand, if someone who is supposed to be watching, engaging, and nurturing my children is not doing any of those things — or worse — I would certainly like to know. Even so, the site’s content is entirely hearsay which leaves plenty of room for rumors, miscommunication, misunderstanding, and even defamation.

Ideally we could all find childcare providers with whom we could establish trusting relationships and who would provide stellar care for our kids 100% of the time. Until that happens — and if you believe that the ends justify the means — I Saw Your Nanny is there for you. (Also, if you enjoy internet drama, be sure to peruse some comments.)

SuperNoVa Mom seems to have a lot in common with Active Family Services, LCC. Her blog is full of tips for local moms on places to go and things to do, but covers a wider region than ours. She publishes a weekend line up of DC Metro Area family events, has a separate blog listing kids eat free promotions by county and day, another listing summer concerts, and — to top it all off — her site has a great name and features a really cool turtle. Be sure to stop by and check it out.

My family and I are preparing for the end of a ten year relationship with a well-loved station wagon. In replacing it we are saying goodbye to the vehicle that carried us through our twenties and are embracing a new type of family adventure vehicle for our thirties, which we hope will facilitate carpools, daycare field trips — 5 carseats (ack!) — and an evolved version of the road trips of past years.

Like many others out there, we are trying to do the impossible: minimize the price and fuel usage and maximize the passenger capacity and durability of the vehicle. We also want to make sure we have space inside for dogs and room on top for boats, skis and large pieces of furniture bought via craigslist. In a perfect world, maybe we could even find a way to not give up the all-wheel drive.… It goes without saying that we require a safe and dependable vehicle.

I googled and googled and couldn’t find a great online solution to appease our obsessive need to analyze and research without pressure from a salesperson. When I didn’t find what I wanted I went to the wise women of the local moms clubs and was given a list of useful websites. The one that seemed to be exactly what I could not find on my own was motherproof.com. It is an excellent resource for researching a mommy car that combines the raw numbers with readable narrative from actual moms.

I would still like to find a database or spreadsheet listing what carseat combinations fit in what vehicles.… if anyone knows of one I would appreciate a tip. Until I find one I would love to use the comments feature on this post to collect your impressive carseat combinations. Please include make, model, year, order of carseats, and any tips you have for fitting them in there.